1. Field
A clothes treating apparatus with a heat pump cycle is disclosed herein.
2. Background
In general, a clothes treating apparatus having a drying function, such as a washer or dryer, is a device that upon completion of washing and dehydration cycles, supplies hot air into a drum containing laundry to evaporate moisture from the laundry and dry out the laundry. The clothes treating apparatus may be categorized as an exhaust type clothes dryer or a condensation type clothes dryer according to a method of treating humid air that has passed through the drum after drying the laundry. The exhaust type clothes dryer may exhaust humid air coming out of the drum outside of the dryer, and the condensation type clothes dryer may cool down humid air to below its dew point temperature by circulating the humid air through a condenser without exhausting it outside of the dryer to condense moisture contained in the humid air.
The condensation type clothes dryer may heat condensate water condensed in the condenser and then introduce heated air into a drum. Humid air may be cooled down during the condensation process to generate a loss of thermal energy, and thus, an additional heater is required to heat the air up to a temperature required for drying.
The exhaust type dryer may also be required to heat humid air up to a required temperature level using a heater, for example, to exhaust it outside of the dryer and introduce air at room temperature. In particular, a humidity of air exhausted from an outlet of the drum may decrease during the drying cycle, causing a loss of heat in the air exhausted to the outside, which is not being used to dry laundry, thereby decreasing thermal efficiency.
Accordingly, in recent years, clothes dryers having a heat pump cycle capable of collecting energy exhausted out of a drum and using energy to heat air introduced into the drum to increase energy efficiency have been developed and released on the market.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a related art condensation type clothes dryer to which a heat pump cycle is applicable. Referring to FIG. 1, a condensation type clothes dryer may include a drum 1 in which laundry to be dried may be placed, a circulation duct 2 configured to provide a passage to circulate air through the drum 1, a circulation fan 3 configured to circulate air along the circulation duct 2, and a heat pump cycle 4 having an evaporator 5 and a condenser 6 installed in series in or at the circulation duct 2 to circulate the air along the circulation duct 2. The heat pump cycle 4 may include a circulation pipe that forms a circulation passage to circulate refrigerant through the evaporator 5 and the condenser 6, and a compressor 7 and an expansion valve 8 installed on the circulation pipe between the evaporator 5 and the condenser 6.
The heat pump cycle 4 having the foregoing configuration may transfer thermal energy of air that has passed through the drum 1 via the evaporator 5 to a refrigerant, and then may transfer thermal energy contained in the refrigerant to air introduced into the drum 1 through the condenser 6. As a result, thermal energy wasted in the related art exhaust type clothes dryer or discarded by the related art condensation type clothes dryer may be reused to generate hot air. A heater (not shown) that reheats air heated while passing through the condenser 6 may be additionally included therein. However, the heat pump cycle 4 applied to the related art clothes treating apparatus is unable to perform any role for a long period of time during washing, rinsing, and dehydration cycles prior to a drying cycle, and thus, an effort for using the heat pump cycle 4 prior to the drying cycle is required.